How Altitude Affects Your Coffee's Taste and Price | Syzygy Coffee

[Music] what's up everyone Pedro here with the singing coffee on today's video I want to talk about how coffee is harvested at different altitudes and how that actually indirectly affects your cup not only on the flavor but on the costs stick around thank you now the easiest way to sort of understand and explain this is if we divide the coffee harvesting into three different tiers a low altitude medium altitude in high altitude now there's uh different altitudes in between of course and you can go to very low or mid high or very high but generally speaking it's easier to understand if we just divide it into those uh three in different tiers so let's start at the very bottom let's start with uh low altitude coffee anything that's harvested in zero to a thousand meters above sea level a good point of reference is Brazilian copy which is fantastic coffee and it is a low altitude coughing now what's good about this coffee is that it is a very traditional tasting coffee it's fantastic uh some Farms Produce fantastic uh specialty quality uh coffee beans and um the work that goes behind it is amazing and you're always going to get something that is very familiar and very nice to drink if we go into a medium altitude coffee that is something between a thousand meters to around 2000 meters you can think of countries such as El Salvador or more famously Colombian coffee now this is where when compared to a Brazilian coffee or we're in compared to a low altitude coffee you start adding a little bit more complexity into the bean um you start getting a little bit more acidity a little bit more floral notes or fruity nodes into that coffee bean finally with high altitude coffee what you're looking at is anything from 2000 meters and up usually around 3000 meters but there are very high altitude coffees as well right but the idea with higher altitude coffee is that you are paying more for that coffee for a number of reasons um you're gonna start getting coffee that is more complex sometimes very complex uh very acidic very floral a lot of tasting notes that go around with high altitude coffee and why does it happen so uh what's I'll ask you this question what's easier to pick something uh here on the ground or to climb a mountain and pick it up there so the answer is pretty simple and the same is true for coffee with coffee that is harvested at ground level what you're getting is access to water easier access to picking the different coffee cherries much easier to work and treat um however you do get more diseases that affect that coffee bean the coffee Terrace tend to be a little bit more uh Plum or bigger because they have so much access to water that they actually retain a lot of liquid and the flavor is not as intense once you start harvesting in that little coffee cherry once you start going up to that two thousand three thousand meter Mark the oxygen for one is a little bit thinner so the the coughing plant needs to work harder to produce the coffee cherry another thing of course is you don't have so much water so the coffin plant itself when you compare a high altitude coffee plant to a lower alternative coffee plant the coffee plant that is at high altitude is not going to produce as many cherries and they're generally going to be very small and this is actually great for us as a consumer or a drinker because what you're getting is less water retention on that coffee cherry and you're getting a lot more flavor and sugars and complexity in that cherry now I'll refer you to this chart right here um you said it as a rule of thumb it's a great way to sort of understand how coffee is affected by the different altitudes now I added the process here as well uh natural or if it's washer or wet process as a point of reference as well I'm going to make a video on that later on but um if you start at the top you'll see Brazilian coffee as I mentioned earlier at a low altitude around 0 to 100 meters if it's a natural process you're getting uh nutty sweet with a low acidity and full bodied coffee or a clean sweet and light body mild coffee if we go all the way to the Ethiopian coffee which by the way I forgot to mention where to get a good quality high altitude coffee um Ethiopia is the way to go if you look at Ethiopian coffee you're starting to get a brighter higher acidity coffee I generally more complex and the only way for us to sort of let me hands these flavors be it a lower altitude or a midi multitude or higher altitude is through us the roasters that is sort of our promise and what we want to make sure that you as the coffin Drinker enjoy the most and this is why what we do as Roasters is very important um we want to make sure that the hard work that goes behind harvesting these coffees specifically those coffees that are harvested at such high altitudes getting joined correctly um the coffee roasting process is very um it's complex but it's a lot of fun and once you start putting the pieces together you understand why specialty coffee needs to meet certain criteria and certain standards so in other words if you want to enjoy a good cup of coffee and make sure that the labors that are being offered to you by that coffee Farm or the Harvesters a lot of coffee um you know you want to make sure that you're getting the most out of that coffee cherry that is where we come in and that is sort of our progress right we want to make sure that you guys are enjoying the best coffee and the only way to do that is through a correct roasting process now if you know anything about the different roasting profiles you'll understand that the lighter the roast the more you're retaining that um original flavor profile once you start going up into medium Rose or darker Rose you start sort of a loosing that initial flavor and those sort of flavors between a high altitude coffee and a low alternative coffee the higher the roast the soil kind of blending together so you start you start actually losing um a lot of the uh sort of the idea of buying a higher altitude coffee that has more complex flavors so my suggestion would be if you are into complex um complexity a very interesting flavors something new some something that perhaps you've never tried before my suggestion would be go for a high altitude coughing that is roasted lightly or medium light roast and you'll be surprised at what you'll find it'll start tasting things into perhaps never thought would have been possible to taste in a cup of coffee and I really do hope that you guys get to experience it and that's pretty much it guys um now keep in mind that there's a lot of things that go into harvesting and processing coffee altitude is one of them but the roasting process is another thing the soil that the coffee used to be harvested in is another thing the type of water and quantity of water so there's a lot of things that make that coffee being spectacular and the only way to sort of experience it is just try it out my suggestion would be I'll buy two different coffee bags try to buy something uh low altitude coffee and something that is high altitude or very high altitude coffee and just try them out ideally same Rose profile light or medium light roast in the same process natural or washed and grab those two bags and give them a shot try them out and you'll see the difference on our end and since he's website you'll see a different coffees varying from El Salvador which is in Colombia which are both medium we have Brazilian coffee which is low and we also have Ethiopian coffee which is high in our website you'll find the details on the altitude we have that as well posted in the description and let me know your thought what do you like do you like low altitude coffee do you like high altitude coffee are you interested in more fruity tasting coffee acidity or do you want something a little bit more traditional more chocolatey more nutty more full-bodied let me know in the comments and that's pretty much it for this video guys thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one you care [Music]

Channel: Syzygy Coffee

Views: 683

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Id: 8t6TEe3xKPI

Length: 10min 22sec (622 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 20 2023